A Fortuna police officer shot and killed a man Friday morning after a reportedly violent struggle on O Street during which the suspect began beating another officer with a baton.
Police Chief William Dobberstein released few details regarding the incident Friday, but said two officers were involved in the early-morning shooting and that the man -- later identified as 26-year-old Fortuna resident Jacob Robert Newmaker -- reacted violently when contacted by police.
"He did fight with our officers," Dobberstein said of the early-morning incident.
According to a Fortuna Police Department press release, officers attempted to subdue Newmaker with verbal commands, pepper spray, baton strikes, control holds and a Taser, all of which were unsuccessful. Ultimately, an officer fatally shot Newmaker after he took one of the officers' batons and began striking him with it.
Newmaker was pronounced dead at Redwood Memorial Hospital later that morning, and Dobberstein has declined to release the names of the officers involved.
Hours after the shooting, as a multi-agency law enforcement team worked to process the scene, nearby neighbors milled about in front of their homes and said they heard police sirens and two distinct gunshots -- one right after another -- shortly after 6 a.m. Friday.
Dobberstein said officers were dispatched to the Angel Heights Drive neighborhood at 6:16 a.m., after a woman reported a "crazed person banging on the door and yelling and screaming in her front yard."
According to the release, a responding officer learned the suspect left the Angel Heights neighborhood on a bicycle, and officers located Newmaker about three quarters of a mile away, at the intersection of Vista Drive and 11th Street. Newmaker initially fled the scene, according to the release, then became combative when approached by a responding officer.
The officer used his Taser on Newmaker, but the nonlethal weapon was ineffective, according to the release.
A second officer arrived and joined in the effort to subdue Newmaker in a struggle that became increasingly violent, according to the release, culminating with Newmaker's allegedly wrestling a baton from one of the officers.
"As the suspect was in the process of attempting to strike the officer with the baton, the other officer fired his weapon at the suspect to stop the attack on his fellow officer," the release states.
Hours after the shooting, a pile of emergency medical technician debris was still in the middle of O Street, between 10th and 11th streets, as well as a police baton left in the roadway.
According to Times-Standard archives, Newmaker had a history of run-ins with the Fortuna Police Department. In January 2010, he was arrested on a pair of outstanding felony warrants at a suspected drug house. In March 2009, Newmaker was sentenced to serve two years in state prison after a conviction of felony possession of a narcotic controlled substance for sale.
After speaking briefly with the press at the scene of the shooting at about 10:45 a.m. Friday, Dobberstein did not return calls seeking additional comment and details of the shooting, including whether the involved officers were injured in the altercation.
The department enacted the Critical Incident Response team protocol following the shooting, prompting investigators from the Eureka Police Department, Humboldt County Sheriff's Office, the district attorney's office and the Arcata Police Department to respond to the scene to aid with the investigation. Officials closed off the area surrounding the intersection of O and 10th streets for hours on Friday to process the scene and investigate, marking what appeared to be dozens of items of evidence scattered around the scene.
The residence from which the initial 911 call was made Friday morning sits near the end of Angel Heights Drive in a scenic neighborhood butting up against a redwood forest. The residence is about three quarters of a mile uphill from where officers ultimately reported locating the suspect. Several detectives spent several hours after the shooting canvassing the streets connecting the two locations, asking residents if they'd seen or heard anything.
Trish Smathers lives at a house just about 20 yards down from the intersection of O and 10th streets, and said she awoke Friday morning shortly after 6 a.m. to a police siren, seeing the flashing patrol lights through her windows.
"My whole house was lit up," she said, standing just feet from Newmaker's bicycle, discarded on 10th Street just down from the intersection. "I didn't know what was going on. It was kind of scary."
Alayne Hunt, who lives just up the street in a house on the corner of O and 10th streets, said she was getting ready to go out to breakfast with her mother-in-law when she heard sirens and noticed that it sounded as if they were coming closer. Hunt said she then went downstairs to investigate.
"I peeked my head out the door, heard a couple of gunshots and decided I'd better peek my head back inside," Hunt said, standing in front of her house, less than a block from the scene of the shooting.
Thadeus Greenson can be reached at 441-0509 [email protected] .
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